Tag: weight loss

I have decided that the regular diet updates were as boring as hell. I don’t want to ditch them entirely but I want to change the focus. I think my overall health is more important than my weight. And I’m sick of this blog getting followed by diet and weight-loss blogs.

Some of you will be thinking ‘I bet that means she’s put on weight again’ but no. Actually I’ve lost half a kilo which is just over a pound so my total weight loss is now just over 15kg (33 pounds). I don’t know how. I’ve not been sticking to the strict eating plan and I’ve hardly been wearing my compression tights so I don’t think it’s all fluid. All I can say is that my body continues to be a mystery.

No news on the replacement compression hosiery. I hope they’re going to arrive soon but it’s possible that they’ve been doubly delayed by the weather. Either that or the manufacturer has lost the order again. Not much going on with exercise because of the fibromyalgia flare up that caused the horrible back spasms. My back pain might be easing off but it’s too early to be sure. It could just be lulling me into a false sense of security.

In mental health news I’m doing an excellent job of seeming ok but I’m having serious executive function problems so I know that something is not right. Or maybe it’s just the same thing that’s never been right and I’m just less tolerant of it than usual.

In creative news I’ve got some excellent ideas for the sequels to the completed novel that I was querying and to the novel I’m finishing off. Sequels are great in theory but if I don’t get those novels published then they’re just more wasted effort.

This week I lost the same 200g that I gained last week and lost the week before. I’m not complaining because I’ve had to step back from the diet plan I was following due to the ‘Beast from the East’ disrupting food deliveries.*

That’s not what I’m going to focus on today. I’m feeling a lot more thoughtful about how being a Spoonie ( a person with a chronic health problem, see here for an explanation of Spoon Theory) affects attempts to eat healthily.

You’d think that having a chronic health problem would make it more important that I stick to some kind of healthy eating plan and you’d be right. But you’d also be wrong because for us Spoonies everything has to be balanced. Any spoons I spend on meal planning are spoons I won’t have later should I need to pay some bills. Any spoons I spend on preparing a nutritious meal are spoons I can’t spend on cleaning up afterwards.

Often the Spoonie life means half assing a bunch of things because if you spend the spoons to do any of them properly it’ll be the only thing you do that day. All those partially solved problems become a cascade of further problems. So instead of doing the laundry OR cleaning the kitchen OR working on my novel I end up putting some stuff in the tumble dryer, wiping down one kitchen surface and fixing exactly one scene. So the next day I have laundry that’s not put away, a hob and a sink that still need cleaned and one slightly less shitty scene that mainly succeeds in making the rest of the novel looking bad.

Not that any of this means I’m giving up on my diet. I’ve got a doctor to prove wrong.

*For people outside the UK the ‘Beast from the East’ was a polar vortex weather system that plunged the whole country into arctic temperatures for a week. It wasn’t just that the temperatures were very low it’s that the temperatures were that low pretty much everywhere so the road clearing services were stretched very thin. It also didn’t help that so much snow fell that our usual tactic of gritting the roads so that the snow melts faster and vehicles can maintain grip was rendered useless.

Before I begin my update I have a message for the various diet and weight loss blogs that keep liking these posts and following this blog. Please stop. This blog is not for you. I regard the entire weight loss industry as predatory. Fat people are not necessarily unhealthy. A person’s size has nothing to do with their value as a human being. 95% of all diets fail and the 5% that succeed only do so by the most meagre definition of success.

I’m not dieting out of any hope that my life will improve or that I will look better or feel better. I’m dieting to prove my doctor wrong. I’m dieting because that’s a thing I have to do if I eventually want to get surgery for my lipoedema. And I don’t have to like it. In fact I hate it. It makes my life so much harder than it needs to be and my life was already pretty fucking hard.

And now we continue with our regularly scheduled update. This week I lost 0.2kg (200g or less than half a pound). That doesn’t seem statistically significant to me. On the other hand it’s not weight gain so I’m not complaining. I had to take a break from my push to 100 squats because my knee objected.

I also had an appointment with the Lymphoedema Nurse to check on my compression tights. She’s suggested replacement compression garments with lower level compression and in a different design. The hope is that they’ll be easier to get on and that I’ll be able to wear them all day.

This week I lost 1.3kg (just over 2 and a half pounds). My total weight loss is now 14.4 kg (31.6 pounds or 2 stone, 3.6 lbs). After experimenting with the positioning of my scales I can be fairly sure this is genuine weight loss but of course much of this week’s total will be down to fluid being forced out of my legs by my compression tights.

Wearing my compression tights continues to be a massive pain in the arse. And everywhere else. Just getting them on uses most of my spoons meaning that I don’t have much left over for chores or writing or working on the thing I’m crocheting for my daughter’s birthday. Or even for reading the book I’m reviewing.

More and more I’m questioning why I’m even on this fucking diet. Let us not forget that calorie restriction is not a treatment for lipoedema, that my value is not inversely proportional to my size, and that no level of weight loss is going to magically render me decorative enough to be societally acceptable. I only got on this damn treadmill because weight loss is a hoop that I have to jump through in order to access the treatments that actually do work.

I am trying to commit to more exercise. Not to lose weight but because I want to be stronger. I’m thinking of taking on a 100 squat 30 day challenge. The idea is to work up to 100 squats a day (any kind of squat counts) and then keep it up for 30 days. I have no idea if this is a good idea but I do think it’s important to have goals.

This week I have either lost 2kg, gained 2 kg or stayed the same depending on exactly where I put the scales and how I stand on them. Clearly I’m going to have to pay much more attention to their exact position on the floor in order to get any idea of the actual trend.

I’m not happy with my eating this week but it was better than the last week. Hopefully next week will be better.

This week has been one long round of the period from hell, struggling with compression tights and attempting to schedule my days so that I get anything done. It’s been two steps forward and three steps back. I still can’t wear my compression tights out anywhere because I can’t get them on properly and that means they just slide down the moment I try to walk anywhere.

Putting the tights on is so exhausting that I’ve only managed one workout this week. I can’t exercise with them on, I have to prioritise wearing them and when I have to take them off I’ve got nothing left for lifting weights. I really hope I get better at this.

I have lost 1.3kg ( just over 2 and a half pounds). I’m sure some of that is fluid because I had one day of wearing compression tights before the weigh-in.

I haven’t been paying that much attention to the calories but I have been careful about my food choices, particularly around the proportion of carbohydrates. I’m not happy with my eating yet. I’m not tracking my food carefully enough and I doubt that I’ll be able to keep on losing weight like this.

I’ve talked before about how important preparation is to sticking to a food plan. If you don’t get the shopping right then you’re setting yourself up to fail. This week we did get the shopping right but having the right food in the house is not enough on its own. My head isn’t in quite the right place for sticking to this diet and I’m not sure what’s wrong.

Maybe the problem is that I’ve been so angry for the last few weeks. Women are often socialised to eat our feelings and anger is probably the least acceptable emotion for women to express. Or maybe the problem is that everything just feels futile at the moment.

Still not back on the diet but I do have a food delivery planned so by the time you read this I should be thoroughly miserable and craving bread. I did weigh myself this week and I’d lost 0.6kg which is just over a pound. It’s bound to be fluid rather than fat though.

Still no sign of the NHS compression garments but I’ve been using the compression leggings that I bought for exercising in. They’re more comfortable than I was expecting. I went for a walk today and it was a lot easier than I was expecting. I think the leggings might be helping to stabilize my knee joints.

I have been strength training but I’m so out of shape that I’m still concentrating on form rather than adding resistance. I think it’s a bad idea to lift heavy with poor form. I’m also trying to build a habit of exercise. If exercising feels natural to me then I’m more likely to do it. I think at this stage that’s more important than pushing myself.

Because I am not back on the diet yet. I did weigh myself as usual and I have gained 1.3kg (2.8 pounds). Some of it will be fluid but some of it is bound to be fat.

I’m not on the diet because I have failed at step one of any good eating plan. The shopping. If you don’t have enough of the right food in the house then you end up eating the wrong food or the right foods in the wrong combinations.

I can’t fix the shopping problem because we are too broke this week. It will be at least a week and a half before I can stock up on the right foods.

My visit to the nurse this week also ended in failure. I don’t have the compression garments I need for my lipoedema because the manufacturer didn’t make them. There is clearly some whole big thing going on there but I can’t work out what it is and I find it hilarious that mine was the only order that didn’t get made.

I ordered some compression leggings from a company that makes gym wear and I’m wearing them right now. They’re comfortable enough and I can do my weight training in them. They even look ok, though obviously not on me. Now I just have to work out how to stop feeling guilty for spending money on them.

But improving every day in tiny increments.

I don’t believe in new year resolutions. Picking some arbitrary, external marker as the starting point for a new beginning is just setting yourself up to fail. But it does seem like a good time to take stock of my ongoing attempts to be less crappy and more not crappy.

In April of last year I decided to start blogging 3 times a week and for the most part I’ve succeeded. There seem to be more people reading the blog but I can’t tell if that’s down to the regular posts or to the content of the posts themselves.

Since September I’ve been trying to manage my lipoedema. I’ve been seeking treatment via compression but although I the nurse ordered compression garments they haven’t arrived. When this blog post goes live I shall be on my way to an appointment with the nurse to find out what’s up with that. I’ve been following a diet to reduce the amount of non lipoedema fat. I’ve been trying to exercise because exercise is, on the whole, a good thing. I’ve lost 12.8 kg so far (just over 28 pounds or 2 stone).

I decided to get back into weight training and to that end I’ve been assembling the right equipment. I got a squat rack for Christmas from my mother-in-law and used the money from my father-in-law’s gift to buy a bench, a 5 ft barbell and two dumbells. Putting the squat stand and the bench together took much longer than I had hoped. It was exhausting and that doesn’t bode well for my exercise plans. However it’s all sorted now and I have started training. So far I’m just using the empty bar and working on my form. Squatting with a heavy bar and poor form is a great way to injure yourself.

In early December I decided to try trimming my undercut at home. My other half very quickly decided that using his beard trimmer to do that was unacceptable and bought me a hair clipper for Christmas. That seems to be working. It means that I don’t have to phone the hairdresser unless I want the top trimmed so it’s easier to look neat. In the long run we might even save money.

I read somewhere, I don’t remember where, that some writers swear by a daily practice of handwriting three pages of whatever you feel like first thing in the morning. The morning bit is potentially a problem but I’ve started trying to keep to a better daily schedule. Since I started the daily journaling practice I’ve written 10 out of 11 days. It’s too early to tell if it’s doing any good. So far it has mainly resulted in me begin forced to confront how bad my handwriting and spelling have got over the last few years.

I am continuing to try to get better organised in every respect but it’s so very hard. My ADHD seems to make sticking to a schedule far more difficult than it should be but also really important. It’s very hard to pick a solid marker of success or track improvement. So it’s a constant fight that never brings any reward but the moment you give up everything will probably go to hell.

So that’s where things are at the moment. I’m trying to be better in a lot of ways. Some of them seem to be working. Some of them might work but I don’t know yet. Some of the things that I’m doing are just so that I can feel like I’m doing something. But hey, you’ve got to do something with your time.

Since dropping the diet for the festive season I’ve lost 0.5kg (roughly a pound). But that’s oversimplifying things a bit.

I’ve weighed myself 3 times since the last update. At the first one I’d put on 3kg (just over 6 and a half pounds, nearly half a stone). I nearly panicked and went back on the diet but we’d already bought the Christmas food. And the next day my period started. I concluded that the weight gain was mostly down to fluid.

The next time I got on the scales I’d lost the 3kg and was back to exactly the same weight. So presumably it was fluid.

The third time I’d lost the previously mentioned 0.5kg. That’s probably also fluid. It’s unlikely to be fat and I hope it’s not muscle because I have been about as active as I was before Christmas.

Today I’m back to actively tracking food and I intend to ease back into restricting first the carbohydrates and then the calories. I also intend to actually start weight training. I should have started already but putting together the squat stand and the bench is looking like a two person job and my beloved is currently laid low by a cold.